Search the Seven Hills Read Online Free PDF Page B

at the fourth or fifth story. Like canyon walls, the high tenements trapped and held the sound and threw it back in a million roaring echoes, voices shouting in Latin, Parthian, Celtic, Greek, Aramaic. It was like one of the beast-hunts held periodically at the circus—the roaring and screaming of bears, elephants, tigers, crocodiles, lions, ostriches, wild asses, all trapped in the narrow walls, and all condemned to die.
    Arrius yelled over the din of a clattering forge, “What about you, boy? How long have you known Tertullia Varia?”
    “About ten years,” Marcus yelled back. Across the street, a harried-looking teacher in a storefront school was screaming declensions at his students. “We used to play together as kids. Her mother and mine are—well, not exactly sisters. My mother was a sort of poor relation; her mother’s mother married my grandfather Pollius—my mother’s stepfather—after he divorced Grandmother. But my mother was really the daughter of C. Drusus Cato, who was proscribed; Pollius was her third or maybe her fourth husband. But in any case Aurelia Pollia and Mother grew up together in Grandfather Pollius’ household, and they remained friends for, oh, years.”
    “Are they still friends?”
    “No,” said Marcus. They edged their way around a group of men surrounding a Vespasian memorial—a public urinal, of which that emperor had built hundreds throughout Rome. “When my father was aedile in charge of city roads he had a falling-out with Varus, and after that he forbade Mother to speak to Lady Aurelia again.”
    “But you were talking with her daughter just before she was kidnapped.”
    Marcus said stiffly, “As I no longer live under my father’s roof, I don’t consider it any of his business.”
    Arrius cocked an eyebrow at him. But he only asked, “And in all the years you’ve known her, did Tullia Varia ever mention the Christians?”
    Marcus shook his head. “Only in passing.”
    “Did she know any Christians?”
    “Great gods, no!”
    The green eyes narrowed. “You sure about that?”
    Marcus hesitated, pulling together bits of the logical process out of his foundering horror and grief. “No,” he said at last. “No, I’m not sure—but I am sure that if she did, she did not know they were Christians.”
    The centurion nodded. “And that,” he said, “is the chief problem with Christians. You don’t know. A few of them don’t trouble to hide their faith—often those are the crazier ones, the fanatics, the kind we’re likeliest to round up. But they’re not the planners. For the most part they keep quiet and keep to themselves, and the emperor isn’t about to hunt them down as long as they don’t make trouble. But they’re a proscribed sect. Their membership is secret. You can’t know who’s a Christian.”
    They followed the windings of a particularly foul and narrow lane among a labyrinth of six-story tenements, buildings that leaned against one another like tired and shabby drunks. In the shops below them, half-naked men and women worked at their trades, calling out to one another in Syrian or Greek, while naked children played in the dust outside. They were in the Subura proper now, and though it was scarcely the fourth hour of the morning, all the wineshops were open, and bedizened whores had begun to parade in their cheap finery. One girl called out gaily, “How’re they hangin’, Professor?” evidently sheerly for the pleasure of seeing him blush. She was not disappointed.
    Arrius went on, apparently without noticing, “That’s one reason I wanted to speak to you outside that house. Slaves hear everything—not that I blame them. Sometimes it’s life or death to a slave to know which way to jump. But Christianity’s largely a slave’s religion. And I’m virtually certain there’s at least one Christian in Varus’ household.”
    Marcus felt himself blanch with shock.
    “Think about it,” urged the centurion. “Do you know the religions of